Fun with Drabbles
by Rydia Highwind
Summary: Various MG through MGS3 drabbles on various points in the stories. Read one, read five. They don't go together anyway. X3
1. Mission Failed

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #1  
  
Phrase: "You honestly think you can beat me?"  
Word Count: 681  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Mission Failed  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: What goes through Raiden's mind as he's forced to take on Solidus?  
Warning: Implications of non-con yaoi, Solidus/Raiden.   
  
--  
  
The wind is blowing outside, but not harshly or cruelly and he thinks maybe it should be.   
  
He is tired of words, tired of voices. He once trusted people, but that trust doesn't exist anymore. He wonders what happens to emotions when one stops feeling them. He wonders if they are gone forever or if they are stored away in the back of his mind or something. He wonders because he doesn't know if he can feel that trust for anyone else, ever again. Everyone has betrayed him, everyone has taken away what little faith he'd offered, and now here he was, standing in the wind, dying.   
  
He realizes now that no one is really evil. He realizes that no one is good either. Everyone he has met in the past twenty-four hours, or has already known for two years, six years, fifteen years--they are all working on their own agendas. They are all using him for their own ends, noble or otherwise. And these ends are all that matter to them; it doesn't matter that in the process of achieving those ends, they happen to decimate someone standing in the middle of it all.   
  
Mission objective: don't go insane.   
  
He isn't so innocent either, he supposes. He has cocked his gun, he has spilled blood--more blood than he can possibly remember. He has been used and moreover, he allowed himself to be used. He doesn't have an agenda to follow, though. He hasn't stepped on anyone, not willingly. He has taken what has been presented to him, and he has used it to get further. Yes, he hasn't been immune to using people to get ahead. Maybe this is justification for everything he has done and everything he has let happen. Maybe there would be justice after all.   
  
Morality is nothing. Everyone is the same. Stay alive, they said, or we will kill the child. But why? Perhaps the child would be better off dead. The child has no relatives, the one person fighting for his survival and well-being had died for a dead cause. Stay alive. Maybe that is his own agenda. Maybe that's what he is working for, using people for, killing for. Kill the man who claims to be a father to you, kill him before he kills you.   
  
Remember the times he put his hands on you, remember the times he forced you to do things you didn't want to do. Remember how you hated it (but you LET him), remember how you wanted to cry (but you DIDN'T), remember how your stomach turned at the thought (but you STOPPED fighting it). Remember how he gave you the gun and sent you off to kill (but he didn't kill those people, you did). Remember how he told you that they weren't people, they were just helmets and uniforms and blood, they didn't have names or eyes or pasts. They weren't real, just like you.   
  
He hears more words, more taunts, and they don't mean anything. They never have. They're just words, words without meaning, without sustenance, without reality. You honestly think you can beat me? Bring it on, then, let's see how you measure up, boy! Not real, not real. It's an illusion, it's a nightmare. It's easier when it's not real, when you can just see it as a video game. No one gets hurt in VR. No one dies in VR. He doesn't like to feel, he doesn't like triumph when there should be horror. He doesn't like seeing the blood smeared over steel and cement and not considering it a horrible thing.   
  
Don't go insane. Follow the mission objective; don't go insane.   
  
Cold metal in his hands, but he can't feel it. The skull suit envelopes his palms, his fingers. Why does he hold his sword? Why should he listen to them and strike this man in front of him dead? He is the one they chose for the death of Solidus Snake and told him he had no free will. Is that a reason? An excuse?   
  
He raises his blade. 


	2. Friendly Advice

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #2  
  
Phrase: "Try to learn some patience. It'll do you good."  
Word Count: 722  
Rating: PG  
  
Title: Friendly Advice  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Otacon and Snake on a random mission somewhere between Shadow Moses and the Big Shell.  
Warning: Um. I...like cheese. XD   
  
--  
  
The computer display was glowing a weak green color in the dim light, purposely on the lowest setting since it was drawing power from a car battery, a battery that was also serving to start the van of the 'get away' vehicle if such a thing was needed. The back of this van saw several different monitors hooked up, all displaying different information, and behind the quiet hum of the computers working to display such things was the thrum of the alternator trying to keep the battery charged.   
  
Amid all the monitors and computers and such stuff was an old beat up desk chair that appeared to be on its last leg of life, held together in some places with duct tape and super glue. And in the chair sat a fairly normal looking guy, tapping quietly at a keyboard, and peering at the various screens through a pair of glasses. Of course, the situation elicited the fact that appearances can be deceiving. The van was now a converted super computer on wheels, and the man, a Dr. Hal Emmerich, codename Otacon, was the one who had built was running that computer. Specifically, he was monitoring a factory down the road that wasn't exactly what it seemed to be either. Or even more specifically, he was monitoring someone inside that factory.   
  
One monitor displayed what appeared to be an outline of a man, exhibited various vital signs and an inventory display. Another showed a simplex map of the compound, complete with a small green arrow darting in an out of boxes representing rooms. Yet another, and the one the man was currently the most focused upon, seemed to be a live feed from somewhere, most likely the factory's main computer system, and Otacon, also a master hacker, was actively hacking deeper into it.   
  
There was a subtle ringing noise in his ear, inaudible to anyone but him, and he turned a quick glance back at the first display, eyeing the inventory and raising one eyebrow as he took in the information showing up there. He raised his right hand and tapped his upper jawbone just behind his ear, switching on yet another tiny monitor, this one displaying directly on his retinas, a tiny flash of green at the lower part of his field of vision. On one side showed a mental projection of his face, and on the other, a projection of someone else's face, split by the number 141.80, the frequency of the man calling him. Simply put, his partner, Solid Snake, inside the building was calling him via codec.   
  
"Do you read me, Otacon?" asked the representation on the monitor. Otacon threw a glance at the second monitor, the one with the radar, to track his partner's position before responding.   
  
The nanomachines could link up with the codec, both internal devices, and portray a visual representation of the person speaking, displaying emotions and a mouth that moved as one spoke. Otacon had once figured out how to manipulate his avatar and had called Snake with rabbit ears once. Though Snake hadn't been real impressed.   
  
"Loud and clear, Snake," he replied into the tiny microphone built into the codec he was wearing. "What's your situation? And where on earth did you get that RGB6?"   
  
A pause. "The armory." Snake gave him a look that clearly read, 'Duh.'   
  
Of course, the armory that was probably incredibly well guarded and posed a severe health risk to any intruder, such as Snake, wanting to get in. Otacon made a mental note to keep a better eye on the radar from now on. "Right. And tell me, why exactly do you need a grenade launcher?" He allowed for just the right amount of dryness to enter his tone.   
  
"The room that leads to the basement stairwell is just beyond what looks like a break room," Snake replied with a particularly mischievous expression. "There's about seven or eight guards in there; the RGB6 is probably the fastest way to get rid of them."   
  
"And to let the entire complex know you're here," Otacon reminded him, his voice a gentle reprimand. "Try to learn some patience. It'll do you good."   
  
"Is that one of your 'inspirational' proverbs?"   
  
"No, it's my own personal advice."   
  
Snake's visage held a smirk. "Huh. Then I'll be sure not to listen."   
  
"Snake!!" 


	3. Set Me Free

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #3  
  
Phrase: "I thought you of all people would understand."  
Word Count: 659  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Set Me Free  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Wolf learned something from Otacon.  
Warning: Extreme sappiness. Het, Otacon/Wolf.   
  
--  
  
The world was her prison, and she never learned how to love.   
  
In fact, the world had taught her how /not/ to love. It had taught her that being close to people was what hurt the most, and how she should avoid it. It had taught her how to view the world through the scope of a sniper rifle, how to aim the crosshairs up between someone's eyes, how to not be scared to pull the trigger. She was no longer repulsed by the blood erupting from her target's forehead, no longer felt the recoil when she fired her rifle.   
  
She was lying in the snow, eyes turned toward the Aurora Borealis lighting the nighttime with its splendor. She knew it was the last time she would see such a thing. It didn't matter, though, not now. It didn't matter that her once white jacket was stained with crimson or that her eyes were beginning to lose focus. It didn't matter. Everyone was here. Everything was set. She was ready, ready to die.   
  
Memories haunted her as she waited for an endless eternity. Memories of a pale, stick thin scientist befriending her and asking her for something she didn't know how to offer. Why did she mind focus on him? Why did her thoughts revolve around this?   
  
She is terrified of him. She is terrified and she knows this now. Terrified of his words, his actions, his thoughts. She enjoys the talks they share, she enjoys the words he gives, but she has let him in too close, come to rely on him, and she can't do this anymore. He is alone too, he is like she is, a lone wolf, meant to be this close to no one. Will he respect her decision? Will he understand why she can't talk to him like she used to? Will her words...hurt him?   
  
Yes. Oh god, there are tears sparkling in those gray eyes. Gray, like the morning sky over Russia...   
  
"I thought...I thought you of all people would understand," he whispers and turns to leave. She has to turn away then, the onslaught of unfamiliar emotion threatening to break her.   
  
Why is her heart breaking? Why is there a burning in her eyes, an ache in her throat, a sob caught in her chest? She never wanted to hurt him, she never meant to let him this close and it is now her fault that he's a part of this. How can she explain that she isn't meant to care? How can she make him understand that being alone is the only way she can be safe?   
  
This is war. People die. She had grown up with this knowledge, and the only way to survive in a world this cruel is to care for no one but oneself. No one expects her to reach out, so she reaches in. No one tries to come near, so she stays away. No one, no one but him. He had fallen clumsily into her world one day and smashed all of her ideals before she could get him to leave. And now she is alone again, and for some reason, it doesn't feel the way it was supposed to.   
  
It isn't supposed to hurt.  
  
Snow was falling. She had never apologized for telling him off that day. She had never told him why she had said those things. She had never cried. She had no use for tears, no use for mourning; and here he was still, tears threatening to freeze to his cheeks and he wept for something she couldn't give him.   
  
Or could she? The world had never taught her how to love, but he had. He had taught her unconditional love, an attraction strong enough to be nothing else, a sick sort of dependency that she had always hated. It was real now, and she knew. And she told him with her eyes.   
  
"Okay, hero," she whispered, "set me free." 


	4. Mechanically Inclined

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #4  
  
Phrase: "This is going to hurt."  
Word Count: 834  
Rating: PG  
  
Title: Mechanically Inclined  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Codecs, nanomachines, and, of course, Dave's inablilty to use anything mechanical.  
Warning: There is no plot to this, it's just random dialogue and it generally sucks.  
  
--  
  
"This is going to hurt," the man leaning against the kitchen counter grunted accusingly as he eyed the pair of devices sitting on the table, "isn't it."  
  
The other man present was sitting at the table, fiddling with two of the wires exposed on the back of one of the half circular contraptions, still trying to figure out exactly how it worked. He leaned back in his chair, frowning a little, and raising one hand to slide his glasses back on his nose. "Don't be so pessimistic, Dave," he reprimanded. "From the sounds of it, the US Marines have already tried this thing out and have had a lot of success with it."  
  
Dave grunted. "They never said it wouldn't hurt, did they." He knew the other man was right, though; he was often overly pessimistic when it came to the things the UN sometimes sent them to keep up with technology they couldn't afford on their own. No one wanted to donate money to an NGO whose acts often ended up viewed as borderline terrorism, especially after that hellish disaster with the tanker a couple of years back. No matter how much something promised to help, though, Dave found himself no longer really trusting anything given to him by the US military. He'd had enough interesting gifts from them; he didn't really want any more.  
  
His roommate and only other member of their anti-metal gear organization, Hal, was still frowning as he folded his hands in front of him and looked again at the devices displayed before him on the table. "No," he admitted, "but think about how much easier it will be to sneak if you don't have to talk out loud to communicate with me, or anyone else. These new codecs are said to be completely mind operated; all you need to do is think a certain way and it'll interpret your brain waves."  
  
Still skeptical, the first man glanced at the toaster, where his waffles were cooking, and then back at Hal. "That's what bothers me," he replied. "A machine that can read brains. Sounds like something right out of an Isaac Asimov."  
  
This elicited a slight grin from his companion. "Or Arthur C. Clarke?" Hal suggested with one eyebrow raised in amusement. The fact that they were Dave and Hal had always been something of a joke for the two of them, thanks to Clarke's novel featuring two characters of the same names. Dave wasn't much on reading, but he'd seen the movie. And Hal read just about anything he could get his hands on, and he'd read it as a kid.  
  
Dave wasn't really much in the mood for joking around and smiling; he was still a little perturbed about having to wear some sort of weird mechanical thing that could read his thoughts and display them to other people. But he gave his partner a half-assed smile regardless, commenting, "Something like that." He then regarded the toaster, which was still toasting his beloved waffles. It never usually took this long. What was the issue today?  
  
"Anyway," Hal said, pushing away from the table and standing up, "they said we should inject the nanomachines at least twenty-four hours before using the codec. That way we don't have to switch them on until after your body adapts to the injection. We're supposed to be doing this at a hospital and using a trained professional, but hey, I'm a doctor, right?"  
  
Hal was a scientific engineer with a PhD and in no way qualified to do anything medical. Dave consequently rolled his eyes, trying not to watch Hal remove a wicked looking needle from the package that had been delivered to them from the UN. "Yeah, right," Dave grunted. "I'd rather give the injection to myself, thanks. And how about after I eat? Those damn things always make me sick." This time, he reached over and poked the toaster.  
  
A blink was given as he realized that the appliance wasn't even warm. "What the hell!? Hal, did you break the toaster? It's cold!" he exclaimed in dismay. A Dave without waffles was a force to be reckoned with indeed, and Hal knew that better than anyone else. Once they'd run out of waffles without Dave knowing and Hal claimed to this day that he had believed he was going to die that morning. If Hal were to break the toaster, there would be a new one by this point.  
  
Hal stared at him, a look of fear glistening in his gray-green eyes hidden behind his glasses. "I didn't touch it!" he said defensively, throwing his hands up in an innocent gesture, the syringe still in his hand and waving dangerously in the air.  
  
"Well, don't just stand there," Dave growled helplessly, completely inept when it came to anything mechanical. "Fix it!"  
  
Hal examined the appliance, and almost immediately, he started to chuckle. Dave stared at him--being without waffles was _not_ a laughing matter.  
  
"Dave? Next time...plug the toaster in." 


	5. Without a Name

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #5  
  
Phrase: "And how the angels weep."  
Word Count: 763  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Without a Name  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: As he dies, Psycho Mantis reflects on his life.  
Warning: A bit of brutality and kinda weird.   
  
--  
  
The stitches on my head were never to help the slices inflicted there to heal; no, there is no healing for me. They serve instead to hold my skull in one piece, hold my brain inside my head. I don't grow hair on my head, or anywhere any longer, though I'm not really sure why. It doesn't matter anymore. The ones who did this to me did so with perfectly clear thoughts, feeling little or even no guilt for the condition they rendered unto me, and each one firmly believed that cutting through my skull and studying my brain would better the human race.   
  
I know this because I read their minds. I choked on their ideals and I fed on their horror as I killed them.   
  
I once had no name. My mother died giving birth to me and my father who raised me hated me for taking her from him. You can call it anything you like, fear, self-defense, a mistake, but I can see it for what it was. I don't deny these things anymore. It was murder. I murdered him in cold blood. That wasn't all either, I then turned around a burned down the entire village. When they found me alive, unhurt, they began to realize what I was. And that, that was when the experiments started, and I had no name once again.   
  
I do not regret the actions I took then, and I would willfully take them again. I didn't read people's minds then as much as they poured their thoughts out on to me, forced me to hear their ridiculously petty ramblings even as I longed for silence. There was no escaping, it was like being in a room full of talking people when you have a migraine headache and you simply need silence to recover. It was enough to drive a lesser man mad, and perhaps it did do a number to my sanity, considering where I am now and how I got here. It's up to you to decide, I suppose.   
  
I'm lying on the floor, soaking in a pool of my own blood, so where I am now doesn't really matter, does it? This man I'm gazing at before me--he has somehow managed to create a future separate from the one I first saw. The future is a confusing thing to look at, so many paths, intertwining and overlapping and branching off into new paths until you can't see what is what anymore and you just have to pick one to follow. The future molds itself, independent of the mortals it confines. He has chosen to follow a future I didn't know existed, and now I'm paying the price.   
  
I've never used my power to help someone before. Not even the little brown haired girl that grew up in the house next to mine that I used to play with when I was small. I don't know why I remember her; she's the only part of my past that still lives with me. I have no past, and I have no future. That's why I'm here, that's why it doesn't matter that he outwitted me and that's why it doesn't matter that he pulled off my mask, exposing my hideous face I've always kept hidden and that's why it doesn't matter that I'll die. I never had a future anyway. I never had a chance to do the things humankind was meant to do, whatever that may be. I used to know but I'm not so certain any longer.   
  
That girl died when I burned down the village. I didn't help her, though I think she tried to stop me, because he corpse was next to me when I started realizing what was going on. She was burned to death, her hand reaching out to me, and I had not a scratch. I can't even remember her name. Why should I help her, why should I help them? But I do, I do. He is like me, only worse, and his suffering won't ever end. Helping and hurting--it's all the same thing.   
  
And yet, there is something so real about this, so nostalgic, as though there was a crash of lightning that started that fire, and that I found her in her house when the flames started raging out of control and grabbed her by the hand to help her. As though I pushed back the flames with my power...but I was not strong enough...not strong enough to save her...only myself...   
  
And how the angels weep...I can hear them weeping... 


	6. Things Unsaid

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #6   
  
Phrase: "If you love me, we're going to have forever."  
Word Count: 517  
Rating: PG-13   
  
Title: Things Unsaid  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Otacon reflects on his relationship with Wolf.  
Warning: More sappiness. Otacon/Wolf.  
  
--   
  
He supposes it isn't so strange that he asked what he did, though it may have seemed odd at the time. Especially for the one he asked, so caught up in his own problems and issues that he probably thought the question was directed at himself and the girl that he felt he couldn't save. But no, that wasn't the case; the question was meant to apply to something in his own life, something he had no way of understanding. It was such an extreme situation, after all, and while the legendary Solid Snake may be used to these sort of things, scientific engineer Hal Emmerich certainly isn't. And there's certainly nothing wrong with asking something one knows nothing of.   
  
Can love bloom on the battlefield? Snake thinks so. Hal does too.   
  
But you have to protect the one you love. You have to take care of them. That was Snake's way of berating himself, he thinks, since Meryl had been injured and there was nothing Snake could do about it. But he wonders if there is something more to the sentiment. One has to protect the one he loves, after all, or risk losing her altogether. He finds that he has to learn this the hard way. Loving someone isn't the same as protecting them.   
  
He knows that now, standing in the snowfield, feeling cold flecks of snowflakes melting against his cheek. The stealth camouflage doesn't work so well in the snow, since the snow gathers on him and melts on him, showing exactly where he stands, so he has it turned off for now. There are no enemies here now anyway. There is no one here but he, and he has never felt so alone.   
  
People die in wars, good people and bad people alike. Everyone knows this, but no one ever thinks anyone they know will die. He didn't think so either, and that's why he didn't say so many things he now wishes that he had. He has a piece of paper where he wrote a list of things to tell her, and it's in his hand. He likes lists and making them because then he won't forget things. He can add to the list whenever he wants to and there it will be and he won't forget. He likes lists, but this list is different. The circumstances have made this into a list of abominations, crimes against himself and against her. Words that will haunt him forever because he never told her while she could still hear him.   
  
He can only tell her now. She can't hear him any longer, and the blizzard is already beginning to hide her body lying there in the snow, her bloodstained jacket again white under a blanket of snow. He didn't tell her before and that was his tribulation, but at least he might tell her now. The list is hard to read and his fingers are numb from the cold, but that doesn't matter.   
  
"If you love me, we're going to have forever," he reads the smeared pencil, and he realizes that maybe they will. 


	7. All the World's a Stage

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #7  
  
Phrase: "Learn to live a little."  
Word Count: 801  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: All the World's a Stage  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Just a personal take on everyone's favorite vindictive, sociopathical, fratricide-attempting pretty boy.  
Warning: Liquid is kind of obsessive and scary. oO;   
  
--  
  
He liked to examine his hands. It was a small habit he'd grown into after a point where he'd somehow managed to gash his right palm open with a scout knife during training. The blood had fascinated him for whatever reason, and even when they'd insisted he bandage it, he would purposely aggravate the wound just to see the pristine white of the bandages redden with his blood. It wasn't hard--he was right handed, after all. Even though now, near twenty years later, the scar was long faded and he wore a set of brown leather gloves most of the time anyway, it was a habit he'd never fully grown out of.   
  
He never faced the person he spoke to, not at first, simply because then he had an advantage. He had the appearance of apathy, the illusion of self-importance--hell, someone had accused him of arrogance before. Ha! If only that poor bastard had known what went through his mind! Then he wouldn't have been so quick to pass judgment. Not that it mattered...it never did. Everyone in the entire goddamn world was so quick to give their worthless opinions, not realizing that no one really cared. He never faced the person he spoke to, and it gave him something beyond an illusion. It also gave his words a theatrical importance when he actually did turn to speak.   
  
He had studied theatre when he was younger, not because the subject held a particular interest for him, but because he had been so thoroughly disgusted with who he was that he wanted to act like someone else. He wanted to BE someone else, someone better. His actions became exaggerated for the stage with time, his every move calculated for the benefit of his audience, whether that be paying patrons waiting to see some thespian production or simply the person he was speaking to. His father, of course, had never approved of such un-soldier-like behavior, said he "simply wouldn't have it", said that he should get out on the battlefield and "learn to live a little", and quite frankly, he didn't care. His father meant nothing to him. Less than nothing! Big Boss was the very one who had made such acting necessary in the first place! Let him not have it, it wasn't important.   
  
It was all theatrics that dictated his motions, allowing those around him to believe that he was more than he was when really all that showed was the shell of a man long dead, long tormented, and long scornful. His anger had become a twisted, vulgar obsession, a desire--no, a _need_ to torment the one chosen over him, the one who had somehow, though they'd never met, had managed to destroy his entire life. The man who, with is unknowing dominance, had left his lesser brother to rot in the dust. And that was the real point of anger; he didn't even know of his superiority.   
  
Almost as though he wasn't superior at all.   
  
He made plans. Plans were things he could follow through with, things he could check off of a list in his mind, things he could chart his own progress with. He followed plans constantly; sometimes it seemed that his entire life was nothing but a large plan, and he supposed that was probably true. It was a plan to live and then to die as a greater entity than the one he had been born as. For acting was not good enough for him any longer. Now he had to prove his own worth. Not to his father, not to his brother, not to the world, but to himself. He was the actor and he alone knew the man who lived inside, and therefore, he was the only one that needed proof.   
  
His brother had already disrupted his plans to take out his father. That was to be his proof to Big Boss, that even though he had made the choice to make him the inferior one of his sons, that he could overcome that and all the bullshit that had been fed to him over the years and destroy the one who had created him. And his brother had denied him that honor. So now it was in his plans to destroy his brother, Solid Snake. The years gave way and his plans grew. Grew into an obsession so twisted and horrible that he was almost ashamed of himself. He knew exactly what he would do to his brother on that blessed day that they finally met face to face. And here was his chance. Snake was the one he didn't face now, the one whom he favored studying his gloved hands to looking at.   
  
He turned to look, impressed in spite of himself. "Can you hear me, Solid Snake?" 


	8. Noumenon

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #8  
  
Phrase: "Someone stop my hands from shaking."  
Word Count: 999  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Noumenon  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Leaving Shadow Moses, Snake reflects on what Fox taught him.  
Warning: Slight Fox/Snake implications. Lame title because I couldn't think of anything better.   
  
--  
  
Everyone has their own stories, stretched out in a jagged path weaving in and out. Every path, every story has its own beginning, its own middle, and its own end. Sometimes stories overlap, and sometimes paths cross other paths and intertwine, and sometimes two paths are so inexplicably linked that they could not be separated despite anything anyone tried. Sometimes two paths construct the same story, and sometimes what seems to be one story is really many stories with different perspectives.   
  
I guess that's what my story is. It has a lot of people in it, some stay for a long time, and some leave right away, before I even really know who they are or why they are there. But there is one story, one path that has always been a part of mine and somehow, even though that path has ended and that story has seen its finish, it'll always be a part of mine. I guess not all paths end, it's more like they merge with other paths and, even though the one carving out the path isn't around any longer, that path is still carried on in other paths. Or at least part of it is. His story is a part of my story and even though he's gone now, it always will be a part of my story.   
  
Everything I am today, the way I think about things and the way I deal with things--everything I am has been colored by his influence over me. I suppose it was probably some sort of hero worship at first, because that's how things go when you're still a bit green and some legendary hero takes you under his wing. And that's what he was, really. I mean, he was the only member of FOXHOUND ever to receive the codename Fox. He was amazing. You had to see him in battle to really appreciate everything he was. Not only was he amazing with his fighting ability, but his tactical knowledge and his ability to read the enemy still blows me away. I read somewhere once that his IQ was over two hundred, and that honestly doesn't surprise me.   
  
It was therefore really quite amazing when he told me that he was jealous of me. I guess it made sense--I mean, he was only a member of FOXHOUND despite his amazing talent. He didn't lead the group. And here I am, a direct copy of the man who founded it, the man who was said to be the greatest soldier in the world when he was alive. Of course he'd be jealous. If I had the abilities that my father did, well, /I'd/ be the one to take over FOXHOUND, not him. I don't know if he ever intended to do that. He died before Big Boss did, so he never got his chance, regardless.   
  
I never did surpass him. I never even reached his level, I don't think. I don't quite know how I beat him on that day. I don't really believe in luck, I never have. If I had any luck, I wouldn't have been standing in the middle of that minefield fighting him hand to hand in the first place. So I guess it wasn't really luck that allowed me to beat him there in Zanzibar Land. I don't know what it was. He always had something that I lacked, higher purpose. A reason to be there. Me? I was just there because someone gave me a gun and told me to get my ass in there. And, like a good little soldier, I listened.   
  
I haven't really changed much since then. I thought I had, spending six years hiding away in a little place where nobody knew who I was, and drowning any problems I still could feel with alcohol. I thought six years with no friends but a barn of fifty huskies would change me, but then they pulled me out of my retirement and stuck me here, and here I am, blindly following their orders again. I didn't question anything they told me and now I see just how much they were using me. It was just like he told me--we're not tools of the government or anyone else.   
  
Well, he wasn't. He had always fought for a higher level, something I didn't have, and I didn't even know what that was. Six years in Alaska gave me no insight, no...it wasn't until I got here and found out what had happened to him after I'd killed him that I really understood what he was talking about. He wasn't a tool of the government, and even after they'd brought him back to life with their drugs and machinery. He'd killed the doctor, destroyed the lab, and run away...to find me. No, he was never a tool of the government or anyone else. He was always his own man.   
  
It was me who was the pawn. I never had what it took to be anything more than a soldier. Always taking orders, always doing what I was told--he never had to worry about me taking over command for Big Boss. He knew me better than anyone else, he should have known that. I don't know what he saw; maybe he just looked at me for who I might have been, and that's why he came looking for me here. He thought I could kill him again, thought I could put an end to his suffering. Oh hell, Frank, I'm just as human as anyone else. I have a heart, you know. And you were the only one who could remind me of that.   
  
Someone stop my hands from shaking. It's not the cold Alaskan air making me shiver. I don't really know what to do with myself now, sitting on this snowmobile and heading for nowhere. I guess all that is really left is to live for what you told me, and maybe someday I'll make you proud. 


	9. Voyeur

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #9  
  
Phrase: "Want some popcorn?"  
Word Count: 421  
Rating: PG  
  
Title: Voyeur  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Ocelot and Olga see something they were probably better off not seeing.  
Warning: ...I was on crack when I wrote this. I'm SO very sorry.   
  
--  
  
"What's going on?"   
  
The thick Russian accent wafted into the metallic hallway, barely heard over the screaming of the captive in the next room. As it was, it was something like a small miracle that Ocelot could hear the girl at all. Their pale-haired captive could sure be loud, and it didn't help that the popcorn Ocelot was eating was making a loud crunching noise. He did hear her, though, and turned to look.   
  
"The boss is having some fun with that kid you dragged in here," he replied, gesturing at the window where it was obvious that Solidus was indeed having some, er, fun. "Want some popcorn?" He extended the half full bowl he held out to her.   
  
Olga blinked at him in disbelief, and then turned back to the window, ignoring his offer. He shrugged and took the bowl back to himself. More for him, then. Not like it bothered him any. A particularly loud scream emitted from the room, causing Olga to raise her eyebrows in surprise. "What exactly is he doing?" she said in a voice that clearly stated she did not want to know.   
  
"You don't want to know," Ocelot confirmed cheerfully.   
  
She was watching the one way glass with an expression of combined awe and horror, and she even winced as another scream emitted from the torture chamber. Olga seemed to want to be looking anywhere other than where she was looking, and yet, she couldn't turn her eyes away. Ocelot was familiar with the train-wreck scenario--you don't want to see, but you just can't look away. And if there was ever a time such a thing applied, it was now. Ocelot, of course, was amused by the entire situation, but he had also been accused of being a sick and twisted person on many occasions and that was something he really couldn't find it in himself to disagree with.   
  
"It's really quite invigorating, isn't it?" Ocelot said, turning his attention back to the glass panel separating them from Solidus and his captive. He popped a few more kernels of popcorn into his mouth.   
  
She blinked suddenly, as if waking up from a trance, and then frowned, leaning forward a little. "What is that, is it--?" She looked at him, her eyes begging for some denial.   
  
"I'm afraid so," he replied. "The boss is dirtier than you'd think. I don't even want to know where he gets /clown/ porn, though...."   
  
"Americans!" The word was spat with disgust, and Ocelot couldn't help but agree. 


	10. Apprentice

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #10  
  
Phrase: "Maybe it's too late to save you."  
Word Count: 593  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Apprentice  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Solidus' point of view from the final battle of MGS2.  
Warning: Kinda weird. First person.   
  
--  
  
You are me.   
  
At least, that was the idea. It started long ago, when you were just a child--I suppose I was a child back then too, thought only in terms of experience. You learn quickly when your life is cut in half by some foolish experiment, or, in my case, when you are the result of such an experiment. That's what I am, you see, some silly experiment made by a bunch of people who had too much time on their hands and too much cash in their pocket. You see me today and I look sixty-four, but I tell you, I've only been here for thirty-two years. I could be mistaken for the father of my older brothers.   
  
In as such, I took you as a mere child and I molded you. Not only did they offer me only half a life, they took away my ability to pass myself down to the next generation. So I decided to defy them. I wanted my own son, and there was no way they could stop me from having you. I turned your childhood into mine--I made you grow up too quickly. I gave you a machine gun when you were six years old, showed you the best way to kill someone. I forced you to watch American war movies to give you image training. I mixed gunpowder into your food to sedate you.   
  
I did that to a thousand other boys too, but you...you were the one I chose. I chose you because you were one of those boys who must have been quite the momma's boy (had you ever had the chance to be one) because you always did what was expected of you. You never complained, never said a word to anyone--not until you were ten years old and lead an entire unit and knew you were indispensable to us. That was when you started complaining.   
  
Now I'm standing here, looking at what you've become. You left too early, and you weren't ready to leave me yet...maybe it's too late to save you. But somehow I don't think so. You don't realize it yet, and you probably never will. Neither do they, I don't think. Things weren't supposed to turn out this way. You were supposed to be my number one, the one to take over for me when my numbered years were spent. And instead, you got it in your mind to run away from everything I had tried so hard to make you. It made me so angry for so long.   
  
I tried other ways to enforce my legacy. I married a woman named Linda. She made an excellent first lady when I took the office of president. That's all I really married her for, appearances (because a bachelor wouldn't make a very good presidential candidate) and social status, though she was nice to talk to. The Patriots killed her in retaliation when I disappeared four years ago. It really shouldn't have hurt as much as it did.   
  
It all came back to you, though. I never realized how perfectly things would work out. I didn't realize they'd find you and pit you against me...no, they don't even see what they're doing, do they. But I see. I see the showdown between us as a test. I can tell you don't want to fight me, but they're making you. If you win, you'll hate them as much as I do. So bring it on, Jack. Let's see if you're everything I tried to make you. 


	11. Inspiration

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #11  
  
Phrase: "Well, I had it right here just a minute ago."  
Word Count: 812  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Inspiration  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Otacon screws up and Mei Ling catches him.  
Warning: Very silly. During the tanker mission of MGS2.   
  
--  
  
Of every possible thing that could ever go wrong during a mission, especially one that Otacon was getting an idea was nothing but a trap that he and Snake and Philanthropy were being lured into, this was probably one of the things Otacon considered the worst.   
  
He was sitting in a rather unremarkable looking van near the viewing point of the Verazanno bridge, various computer displays glowing a soft green illuminating the otherwise unlit interior of the back of the van. The van was essentially a converted super computer with wheels, giving him details on the vital signs, inventory, and location of his partner running around on a tanker in the New York harbor due to sail right under the Verazanno in a few minutes. There, Snake was due to get off the boat with photographic evidence of the new model of metal gear that the Marines had created. It looked now, though, like they'd have to make another meeting point. Snake hadn't made it to the holds where Metal Gear RAY was being stored, and the tanker was already visible from the Verazanno, even in the pouring rain and heavy mist covering the bay.   
  
Despite everything that had gone wrong thus far, the worst thing to go wrong was standing behind Otacon, and glaring narrowly at him. Good god, he hated it when Mei Ling glared. He really kind of hated it whenever she came to check in on him during a mission. But now was just...an especially bad time for her to come in.   
  
He had Snake waiting for him on the codec, trying to get through to the ship's holds without being seen, while Otacon himself was performing all of the data analyst roles needed, as well as mission preparation work and data recall and CO and relay and anything else you could possibly need at your back in a mission like this. It really was a lot for one person to handle, hence Mei Ling being a small part of the missions when she had the time. When she was actually helpful, she was most certainly a blessing to have around. The problem came in when she got mad at Otacon. Kind of like...oh, right now.   
  
Her pointed almond eyes were beyond glaring now, he could feel it on the back of his neck even as she looked over his shoulder, and he nervously shifted as he rifled through the large stack of papers in his hands. He was quite actively /not/ looking for the paper she was demanding to see, simply because he knew she wouldn't like what she found if she were to see it again, and wishing to high hell that he had thought to put a paper shredder in here. Well, there were always improvements being made to the computer-van, and that'd simply be the next one to make. Yeah.   
  
"Come on, Otacon, you just /had/ it," she growled, her normally sweet voice edged with annoyance and exasperation. Her hands were on her hips in an air of 'I don't want to hurt you, Hal, but I will if I have to.' "I saw it! Where did it go?"   
  
"Well, I had it right here just a minute ago," he stuttered, stumbling for some sort of an excuse and trying his absolute best to conceal the paper three sheets from the bottom. He could almost /hear/ Snake's taunts when this was all over. No. She couldn't find the paper. It was simply bad for his character for Snake to know he'd asked Mei Ling for help and then not even /used/ said help. Well, gee, it wasn't like he didn't have his own reasons.   
  
"Oh, there it is! I just saw it. No, give me that!" Mei Ling had the paper in her hands before Otacon could even try to fight back. She was way too quick for her own good, that was for sure. He didn't try to get the paper back. It was far too late for that. Instead, he winced prematurely and waited for her to start yelling at him.   
  
"HAL! You wrote all over this! After I took all that time out of my busy schedule to write these up for you! You know how busy I am! How could you do that? Snake, he's been feeding you all kinds of nonsense, don't listen to him! He made up his own meanings to all of my proverbs I gave him!" she exclaimed, even going so far as to address the man on the other end of the codec.   
  
"I could sort of tell," Snake admitted, and Otacon glared at the tiny avatar representing his partner and the dirty little smirk adorning its green face. "He's...eh...not very good at finding meaning in these things, I'm afraid."   
  
"I'll say," Mei Ling returned. "The Deep family's fish? Fermented fruit? Oh, come on, Otacon..." 


	12. Off Duty

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #12  
  
Phrase: "We'll never fit in, will we?"  
Word Count: 353  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Off Duty  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Snake and Fox on their day off. Fox's POV.  
Warning: Hmm, not much really.   
  
--  
  
The man sitting across the table from him wasn't much of a man at all, really. The kid was barely drinking age, and yet he was completely decked out in army fatigues and had fired more types of guns than most people realized existed. At twenty-one years old, the kid was still green but terribly good at what he did. He didn't look much like an infiltrator, choosing to pack some good muscle power over bare prowess. Which was admirable, really. Especially since his weapon of choice was a handgun.   
  
It was rather amusing to watch him bent over a little box with a pair of chopsticks and going through the leftover Chinese takeout he'd found in the fridge. The man across the table from him was supposed to be filing his reports on the new applicants to their division, but instead found himself watching the brunette across the table from him just over the rims of his wire frame reading glasses.   
  
The kid's name was David, but most of the division knew him better by his codename: Snake. He was the first person in FOXHOUND to receive the same codename as Big Boss himself had however long ago. Just to prove how good he was, or something. Across the table sat the only person in FOXHOUND to earn the codename Fox, but no one went on about that any longer. Stupid kid.   
  
Snake got up a moment later, the Chinese finished, probably to rummage around in Fox's fridge for a beer. Off mission, the kid practically lived in Fox's officer apartment rather than stay in the recruit dorms. Not that anyone /blamed/ him.   
  
The kid was known to zone off in his own little world sometimes, and Fox was getting used to completely random statements. So when he heard, "We'll never fit in, will we?" from the direction Snake had left in, he wasn't really surprised.   
  
"You're an infiltrator, kid," he teased without looking up. "You're supposed to fit in /anywhere/."   
  
He proved himself worthy of his codename by deflecting the empty white container directed at his head without even looking up. 


	13. Failure By Design

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #13  
  
Phrase: "If we all had hearts, there'd be no salvation."  
Word Count: 759  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Failure by Design  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Raiden reflects. Post MGS2.  
Warning: Angst, stream of consciousness, suicidal thoughts, insanity.   
  
--  
  
There's a little boy living in a deep, dank chamber where the door is fitted with too many sorts of locks and chains and wires and bolts to count. He's chained to the wall or confined to a cage, starved half to death, and always a dirty mess. No one knows he's there, and no one would care if they did know. He's always been nothing but a dirty little orphan with no past and no future and a present that was never worth repeating. He's worthless, he's nothing, and his existence is completely unremarkable except for one small thing.   
  
I hate that little boy. I hate him more than I hate anything else in the whole world. I'm the one who chained him up and stored him away where no one could find him. I store him away so far away from myself and yet he still manages to come out and wreck my life. I hate him and I want him dead. I've beaten him and hurt him every way I know how. I've tortured him, locked him away, done everything I can think of, but I can't kill him.   
  
He's part of me, you see. A part of myself I wish had never existed. And that's why I can't kill him.   
  
I was able to forget he existed for a time, and those years were the best years of my life. They were years when I worried about the brand of toothpaste I used and if it tasted good or not rather than whether or not I had enough ammunition to put a hole in the enemy lines big enough for me to get through and get back to the camp. I just thought that I was a natural when it came to pointing a gun. I just thought that everyone experienced that out-of-body feeling when they aimed a gun at a danger without even realizing what they were doing. I just thought I had a strong stomach and that's why the blood sticky and warm all over my hands didn't bother me.   
  
And now I'm stuck in this feeling and I know better now. I know that that little boy is still chained up in there and there's not a fucking thing I can do about it. I'll never be able to be free of him again. There were four years, four years where the only reminders were the nightmares that would throttle me in my sleep and make me realize there was something more to all of this. But I didn't /want/ to know. I didn't /want/ to remember. And so I woke up and took a shower and tried to forget all over again. I'm good at that, you see. Good at forgetting.   
  
That's how I'm able to do this now. I can forget your face when I want to, forget the way your eyes look past me and see into my soul. I always hated that, you know. I hated how you seem to know me better than I know me. I hate feeling transparent. I hate the way you look at me like you know everything about me. Because you do know everything, and I hate that too. Because you don't react correctly. You're supposed to see that little boy and know everything I do to him and hate me for it. You're supposed to shun me, turn me away. That's what you should do. That's what I do.   
  
I think I'm heartless to do this to you. I think I'm heartless to do what I've already done. I think I've always been heartless. Maybe I was born without a heart. But that's okay. If we all had hearts, there'd be no salvation. And heaven knows I could use some salvation. Not that I deserve any. Not that I've ever done anything worthy of your affections, of your help, of your pity. I wish you'd just leave me alone. Leave me alone so that I could die. There is one way to get rid of that little boy, you see. I've found a way to get rid of him for good. But he's a part of me, a piece of me. Do you understand? Do you see? To get rid of him, I need to get rid of me.   
  
You'll never understand this. You won't understand why I needed to leave, and I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you, I never did. I'm insane, I'm irrational, and I'm fucking tired of this. Let me go. Please, just let me go. 


	14. Confessions of a Disenchanted Heart

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #14  
  
Phrase: "And that was the straw that broke the camel's back."  
Word Count: 871  
Rating: PG  
  
Title: Confessions of a Disenchanted Heart  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Dave has a confession to make.  
Warning: Silliness, lots of cynacism.   
  
--  
  
There's something you should know about me. It's a dirty little secret I don't like to think about often, much less share with other people. So I guess you should feel privileged that I'm disclosing this to you or something. It's not something that's easy for me to admit. I mean, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the parties involved by even feeling this. You'll probably think I'm a loser, and I don't know. I can't really argue with that. It's not like I don't feel bad enough as is. But here are the facts, plain and simple. I can't pay attention when my best friend talks to me.   
  
I know. It's horrible, isn't it? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you met the guy. Hal doesn't get out too much, you see, and I think he's kind of lonely. I live with him in a little apartment, so I get to sift through the brunt of it. God, once I made the mistake of asking something about how virtual reality worked--he's an engineer, you see, he /writes/ VR programs--and, well, I started timing him because I was that bored. You know how long he rambled? He went for two hours and thirty-seven minutes. About stuff I can't even begin to understand. He wasn't finished either. I cut him off because he finally took a breath and I thought my brain was going to explode if he kept talking. Two hours and thirty-seven minutes! And if you asked me to repeat one word he said to me on that day...well, I don't think I could do it.   
  
You see, it doesn't matter if I pay attention or not. His brain works at a completely different level than mine does. Sometimes I feel like he's talking to me from a different planet or something. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy, but when he tells me about the something of the something else and how you shouldn't hook together the thing and the other thing...well, it's obviously pretty lost on me. I don't know if I'm just a damn good actor or something, or if he's really just that unobservant. I'm leaning toward the latter, because I'm sure I look completely glazed over. That's how it feels anyway. Getting up from talking to him is like waking up from a deep sleep where you had dreams that you know you had but can't quite remember.   
  
What's even /worse/ is when he tells me about his job. I mean, I'm glad he enjoys it and all, but...well, you see, he works at a little computer repair shop. With a bunch of geeks just like him. Oh god. Listening to him talk about his job is enough for me to support legalizing euthanasia. Seriously. As if one 135 pound pasty skinned computer geek wasn't enough, now we have stories about like six of them getting together and talking. It's a good thing he never invites them over. I think I'd consider suicide. Or maybe I'd go insane and take them all with me. That sounds good.   
  
You can probably take a guess as to what he's talking to me about now. Yeah, that's right. He's talking about his job and what happened there today. I'm about to cry, I really am. It's great and all that something weird happened and something exploded, and I'm sure I would have found it uproariously funny if I had been there and not hearing about /why/ it happened. I don't understand what a router is or why hooking it to a certain computer can cause things to burst into flames. I don't understand power connections or cords or anything. He's been going on for an hour at least--I forgot to look at the clock--and he's not even to the point of his story yet.   
  
"And /that/ was the straw that broke the camel's back," he says, waving his arms emphatically, and I think I've decided it's about time to beat my head into the wall until I fall unconscious. "Once Hugo hooked those two together, that was the end of everything. You should have seen it, Dave; it was spectacular. The sprinklers went on and everything. The fire department even showed up. Though I think they're called automatically when the smoke detectors go off. Some sort of automatic safety device. Kind of stupid if you ask me. Though I guess if something happened when no one was there, it'd be okay. Anyway, so the sprinklers go on, and everyone's running around with tarps and plastic and anything they can find to cover up the computers because you know what water does to electronics."   
  
I actually have no idea what water does to electronics. Probably something bad. From the way Hal is talking, I'm going to make an educated guess and assume that water on electronics causes the apocalypse to hit earth, God willing or otherwise. I also don't really care what water does to electronics. Frankly, anything more complicated than the telephone is beyond my comprehension anyway. All right. Mental note. Spilling water on the phone could cause apocalypse. Avoid at all costs, unless Hal is talking about work. 


	15. Gray Skies and Pavement

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.  
**.

**

* * *

**

Challenge #15  
  
Phrase: "I was so weak that I couldn't even cry anymore."  
Word Count: 699  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Gray Skies and Pavement  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Pre-plant. Jack dreams.  
Warning: Really, really weird. Inconsistancies are intentional. On a random note, I apparently can't use my former dividers because this site hates me, so here's something new for your enjoyment. Woo. I know it looks stupid, but there's no other way to do it anymore. Wee, random periods. 

.

* * *

It's raining outside the little diner they always meet at on the corner of Riley and 72nd, and he's glad to be inside, brushing the precipitation off of his jacket. It's a Tuesday evening, just like always, and their booth is even free for them. He smiles at the pretty blonde waitress as he walks by, and he knows she recognizes him by now and is preparing him a cup of coffee just the way he likes it. He slides into his side of the booth, next to the window, and he leaves his jacket on. They never stay that long anyway. Just long enough to warm up with their coffee or hot chocolate and to talk about whatever needed to be talked about that day.  
  
The waitress comes back with his coffee, black, and he looks at his watch. It's two past eight, and he's alone in the booth. His companion is late. That's rare. His watch must be fast. The clock on the wall says it's seven fifty eight. No wonder he's still alone. He sips his coffee and looks out the window. There is no one outside, no one wants to walk or drive in this weather. Even the diner is surprisingly empty. There is nothing outside, just gray skies and pavement. Nothing until the edge of the world, except maybe a few sets of headlights here and there.  
  
Minutes pass, and the waitress comes back with a cup of hot chocolate, which she sets across the table from him. She pushes a lock of her dark hair behind her ear and glances at him. "Where's your friend?" she asks, because she isn't supposed to bring out a drink for someone who isn't there.  
  
The clock turns to eight o'clock exactly, and the bell on the door jingles as it opens. He doesn't have to turn around to look to see who it is. He already knows. And he smiles at the waitress. "He's right on time," he tells her. Just like always. She smiles back and steps away from the table as the man in the trench coat approaches the table, and then she heads back to the kitchen.  
  
The man sits down across from him and he is still looking at the waitress. "She's cute," he says. "I like redheads." He pours milk in his coffee. He hates it black. That's why he usually orders a cappuccino when they meet here.  
  
"We shouldn't meet like this, Jack," says the man. His face is hidden under the brim of his hat. He always wears a hat when it rains. It rains a lot. He can't remember what the man's face looks like. "This isn't good for you. You keep changing things."  
  
"I needed to talk," he says, looking down into his cup. He likes his coffee black, and he'll never understand the obsession with cappuccinos these days. "Everything's going wrong. I just broke down again last weekend. It's all going to hell. Jesus. I was so weak that I couldn't even cry anymore." He stirs his coffee with his spoon, watching the steam rise up and dissipate in the air in front of him.  
  
The man in the trench coat sighs and takes a drink from his cup. "You need to stop coming here. You're only making things worse for yourself." The cup hits the table with more force than was needed, but none of the contents splash over the sides. "Jack. You know what you need to do," the man says, and goes to remove his hat, but his companion stops him. The man sighs again and lowers his hand. "You know where you need to go."  
  
"I don't want to go back there," he whispers, and his hands are cold.  
  
The man stands up. "I'm leaving now. I'm not coming back." He can't stop the man from going, and he doesn't know why. The white haired waitress looks at the table, and he watches the man walk out the door, while he sits helplessly in his booth with an empty coffee cup and a sense of being lost.  
  
And he remembers that there is no diner on the corner of Riley and 72nd.


	16. This Time Imperfect

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

* * *

Challenge #16  
  
Phrase: "Please just give me a little more time."  
Word Count: 795  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: This Time Imperfect  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Otacon is forced to deal with another death. MGS2, just after Emma's death.  
Warning: Angst, death.

* * *

He finds himself kneeling on the tile and pleading for something he knows he cannot have. The others are standing above him, talking in low voices as not to disturb him, to let him know that life really must go on, and he finds it very thoughtful but unnecessary. He doesn't think he could hear them if he wants to, and he really honestly doesn't. He knows life must continue, he knows there's a lot that needs to be done. And once again, he has fallen to his knees with useless tears gathering at the rims of his glasses, knowing he is useless again, his pacifistic mind taking him to the back burner where he must simply /watch/ instead of /act/.  
  
That's how it always is, isn't it? That's how he always ends up with something else he needs so desperately and could never have ripped away with a confession at the last second. A confession that he could have indeed had what he had needed if he had simply asked. And now, once again, he finds he hates himself even more. He is tired of standing in the background and watching others do the work for him, only to watch that which means most to him fall and he is tired of bloody corpses in his arms. He is tired of crying, and he doesn't know how to stop.  
  
Always the survivor. And he doesn't know why.  
  
Her blood is hot on his hands and her skin is cooling quickly, but he can't let go just yet. He thinks his hands shouldn't be numb this time, clutching death in his arms, but they are. Just like a similar day four years ago in Alaska. He is glad his hands are numb again with the stain of death. He wonders if your hands always go numb when you hold someone who dies. He doesn't think he wants to find out, not first hand anyway. Who will be the next to die, he wonders absently, and then he does not think about it any longer.  
  
No, staying in the present will be much better than worrying about the future. And venturing into the past would have been more beneficial yet, despite the impossibility. Looking back only makes things worse, he reasons, and he still can barely look at her face. The blood spilled over the blue tile is anonymous, and the dead weight in his arms is unidentifiable, but if he looks at her face, he has to admit that it is in fact who he knows it to be. He must stay with her now, though, if only for the moment before they must stand up and go on, to finish this mission.  
  
Now. Now it is time to go. There's no time left, no more goodbyes that can be said. He looks at her face, he reaches down and closes her eyes. He is okay now, because he has to be. He lays her body on the floor, but only because he can't hold her any longer. He stands up, and he doesn't think he remembers how to walk. But his legs remember for him and he can't even tell that his knees feel like jello, just like they must have last time. The bird still on the perch is calling his name, and he opens the door to the cage automatically, as though he meant to.  
  
He doesn't know why he can't see the green bird flutter out of the cage, or why he can't feel it landing on his arm. He doesn't know why he can't hear the announcement over the loud speakers and yet he understands it anyway. He doesn't know how he manages to respond to the other two men in the room with him. There is no scientific explanation for any of this, but he's long since realized when someone dies, you go a little bit insane. And there is no science in insanity.  
  
"We won't be able to get everyone aboard," Raiden points out, speaking of the hostages.  
  
Snake cuts him off. There isn't time for idle chatter. "We'll just have to take as many as we can."  
  
"My sister...," Otacon starts, and two sets of eyes turn toward him. He stops, and he realizes he doesn't know what he is trying to say. /Please...please just give me a little more time...,/ and he knows his thoughts are irrational. There is no time. There is need for action now. He can sense their impatience combined with a reluctance to interfere. He has no time to finish grieving now, he has a job to do. Perhaps for once he can do something other than sit on the sidelines and watch.  
  
"...won't be able to come with us," he finishes. 


	17. Stalking and Stealth

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

* * *

Challenge #17  
  
Phrase: "I never leave my home without it."  
Word Count: 711  
Rating: G  
  
Title: Stalking and Stealth  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Realized halfway through this that this was supposed to be rated G, and had to edit all of Dave's foul language out. XD; So when Dave talks, just imagine that every other word is "fuck" or something. This drabble features angry Snake, vindictive Meryl, and caught-in-the-middle Otacon.  
Warning: A few very angry characters, and a slight breach of the fourth wall.

* * *

Dave was very angry, and Hal brought him out for supper to cheer him up, hopefully get his mind off of the matters of the day. The distraction had been quite welcome, and Dave had humored Hal by breaking out of his deadly little storm cloud of death while they were at the restaurant. But the walk back to the apartment where Dave now stationed his entire duffel bag full of belongings, as well as a television set he'd smuggled out when he found out that Hal didn't have his own, brought them past a certain set of apartments, and suddenly, Dave was very angry once more.  
  
"I hate her," he hissed, glaring at the door to the building. "She's a lying, manipulative little witch, you know that? And she still has /my sneaking suit/."  
  
Hal sighed as Dave started his rant once more. Apparently when the infiltrator had packed his bags and walked out on Meryl, he'd somehow missed his sneaking suit in the fray and, upon this discovery, he was even more terribly vexed than he had been when he had come knocking on Hal's apartment door in the first place. And since that point in time, periodic rants about how much Dave hated Meryl had become quite commonplace.  
  
Arguments between the two of them were neither infrequent nor unobtrusive. Hal once decided that if Dave and Meryl were fighting, that the entire city block was aware of such. But this clash, it seemed, had been particularly vicious and had ended with Dave not only storming out of the apartment building to go and complain about her to Hal, but he had taken his belongings with him this time. Despite constant threats that he was going to leave her, this was the first time he'd ever actually attempted to move out. Hal, of course, didn't mind having a roommate, especially since Dave stayed over there half the time anyway, and so he had welcomed the miserable looking infiltrator without a word.  
  
"Why don't I go ask her for it?" Hal suggested diplomatically, since they were outside her apartment anyway. "She isn't angry at me, after all. Maybe she'll listen to me." He knew the likelihood of such was minimal. Right now, he was Meryl's enemy, simply because he was standing next to Dave at this current moment. To ask her for something of Dave's would be making himself into great target practice for her catty retorts and fierce temper.  
  
"Forget it," Dave growled, casting contemptuous glares at the building and probably seriously frightening some people near it. "She'll throw you out the window and pray she hits me. You know that." He muttered something that sounded pretty close to something that doesn't belong in a G-rated drabble before continuing. "I wish I could sneak in there and get it or something...of course, that sort of defeats the purpose, since she has my /sneaking/ suit."  
  
Something occurred to Hal very suddenly, and he reached into his coat pocket and dug around for a moment, searching for a small piece of machinery he always carried with him. One couldn't be too careful these days, especially while living in New York City, he reminded himself. True, he hadn't used the thing once in the four months since Shadow Moses, but really, it was just a comfort having it there in case he might need to. Finding the object, he pulled it out of his pocket and proffered it toward his companion. "You could use this instead."  
  
Dave gave him a blank look while it took him a moment to process exactly what the little engineer was offering to him. A look of sudden dawning appeared on his features as he realized what the machine did. He blinked a few times in obvious surprise that Hal still held on to such a thing, but then, it wasn't that odd really. He took the object in his hands and looked it over once or twice. "You have your stealth camouflage with you?" he asked, his anger seeming to dissipate it something that Hal found even more scary, really--mischievousness.  
  
"I never leave my home without it," he offered a little nervously.  
  
Dave attached the item to his coat, smiled, and promptly disappeared from sight. 


	18. Names

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

* * *

Challenge #17  
  
Phrase: "What will I become?"  
Word Count: 522  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Names  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Fortune reflects on who she is.  
Warning: Angst and over-drama. But hey, this /is/ Fortune, after all.

* * *

I have many names given to me over the years.  
  
I am called Fortune. They call me that because I don't seem to be able to die. The guns fired at me are useless, and the bullets fly wide, arching out around me as though there's some sort of invisible barrier. This has been going on since I joined Dead Cell, and that's what helped me work my way into a leadership position here. They call me Fortune because they think I'm lucky to be alive. But I disagree. Being forced to remain alive in this mortal plane of existence is the unluckiest thing that's ever happened to me. I joined the military because I wanted to die. I wanted peace. I wanted death, but I couldn't seem to take my own life.  
  
I come from a military family. My father was a commandant in the Marines and my husband was a colonel and the original leader of Dead Cell. It was only natural that I should join too, and look where it's gotten me. Nowhere. Now I can't die, no matter how hard I try. My father drowned aboard the ill-fated USS Discovery that Solid Snake sank two years ago, and my husband was jailed for a crime he didn't commit. My mother took her own life soon after, unable to deal with a 'criminal' in the family...but she'd always been a little off since Dad died. I can't say as I blame her. After I lost the baby, that's when my husband lost his will to live...and now I'm alone. Why /should/ I have to live?  
  
My friends call me Lady Luck. Some people say I have sold my soul to the devil for the ability to go on living, but that's not true. They don't understand that I long for death. Some have said that my luck on the battlefield is to make up for my bad luck in life. Perhaps that is true, but if so, I curse that luck as well. No one seems to understand that death is truly what I long for. No one can understand what it's like to lose everything important to you in a span of six months. They can't see that all that's left is a broken woman, a shadow of who she once was, waiting for her death simply so that she can be free.  
  
My marriage certificate reads Helena Dolph Jackson. But that isn't who I am any longer. It's a name from my past, a named offered by a dead mother and a dead father and a dead husband. What am I now? What will I become? These are questions I don't know how to answer. I'm afraid of living and of loving, since it hurts so much to lose. I can't live in this world any longer, nor can I part from it in death. I'm a specter, a ghost caught between two worlds.  
  
My names can't tell you who I am. I am not Helena Dolph Jackson. I am not Lady Luck. I am not Queen, and I am not Fortune. I simply am, indefinable, unnamed. 


	19. Breathing

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #19  
  
Phrase: "I triple dog dare you."  
Word Count: 833  
Rating: PG  
  
Title: Breathing  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Raiden leads Emma through the Big Shell.  
Warning: Strange format. I was trying something new. Switching perspective, present tense.   
  
--  
  
Emma Emmerich is sixteen years old. She is a computer genius who wears glasses for show and is deathly afraid of the water. She is also shivering and wet and looks to be on the verge of tears.   
  
Raiden is twenty-three years old, an adept infiltrator and scared of nothing but himself. He doesn't blame her.   
  
Emma is a hostage who has been drugged so that her legs don't work properly. She has had reasons to fear her own death is impending for the entirety of the day in question. She has been pushed around, forced to do things against her will, and locked in a room where she'd have drowned had Raiden not found her. She has had to deal with an estranged brother who likely never expected to see her again and is being harsh with her. She has also had to face her biggest fear compounded by the fact that she would die if she didn't, and she might die if she did.   
  
Raiden is simply following his orders to save Emma, and there was no other way but through the flooded Central Core. There were times when he'd come up for air and she would be gasping and coughing and he never apologized because there was no way for him to do so, even though he felt like he should.   
  
Emma is sitting with her back against the orange wall, her knees tucked up against her chest and under her chin. She is using this break in their expedition to get back to Shell 1 as a small rest while Raiden is off doing whatever it is that he does before dragging her with him into a new room. She knows he tries to walk slow enough for her, but he's jumpy and impatient, and she can understand why. She knows he has probably been running around all day trying to save the hostages and all of that. And she knows who is making him do this and why. She thinks she likes him enough not to tell him.   
  
Raiden is clearing them a path. Emma can't walk very well or very quickly, so it's important that there will be no one around to see them and call for back-up. He thinks killing the guards would be the best and therefore prevent them from waking up later, as they would do if he simply tranquilized them. He uses the M9 anyway because he knows Emma doesn't like to see them dead. He wonders why what she thinks matters as much as it does. He uses the knock-out rounds on the two soldiers and drags their bodies to an inconspicuous corner before heading back to where he left Emma.   
  
Emma is starting to stand up when she sees Raiden coming back around the corner. Her legs aren't tingling any longer and she's getting closer to being able to walk without help, but it still takes her a little extra time to get up. She knows he's in a hurry and appreciates the extra effort. She has to install the virus to attack GW, after all. No one else can do it. Arsenal will be taking off soon. She wonders if the Patriots have tampered with the disc and changed her program. She holds out her hand to signal that she is ready to go, since it's important that they are quiet.   
  
Raiden is holding her hand. It's warmed slightly now that she's out of the frigid ocean water filling the core. Raiden's suit is impervious to the cold, but his face was exposed and he can't imagine what it must have felt like for her, in just a tee-shirt and shorts. He leads her across the horseshoe-shaped walkway and notices she tries not to look at the unconscious guards, even though they're just unconscious. He brings her into the room with the ladder opening up to the bottom of Strut L and stops to open the trapdoor. "The oil fence should be just down here," he says. "Just a little further."   
  
Emma is letting go of his hand. His warmth leaks through his glove like it did against her stomach and chest while they were swimming. It wasn't much comfort, but it was enough to keep her going, listening to his heartbeat and thinking inexplicably of Hal. She hates the way Raiden keeps telling her 'just a little further.' The line is stale now, and she doesn't believe him now. "I've heard that line before," she says indignantly.   
  
Raiden is opening the trapdoor and feeling the rush of the ocean breeze on his face as he does so. He looks down to the water many feet below. There's a ladder, but it'll still be a stretch and he has to admire Emma's resolve. He knows he needs to keep the mood high to keep her from panicking, so he says jokingly, "You know, I could just toss you down."   
  
Emma is smiling. "I triple dog dare you," she says sweetly. 


	20. Slow Burn

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #20  
  
Phrase: "I woke up alone."  
Word Count: 802  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Slow Burn  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: A year after Zanzibar Land, Snake reflects on his life and who he has become.  
Warning: Yaoi, Fox/Snake. Extreme angst. Seriously. It has Dashboard Confessional playing in the background, or at least it SHOULD.  
  
--  
  
I woke up alone this morning.  
  
It's been a year now since I started waking up without anyone next to me in bed, but somehow, I'm still not used to it. It really hadn't been very long that I did wake up with him there, but it still bothers me when I roll over sleepily and he's not there, or when I wake up from a nightmare and I'm all alone. I don't like being alone, but I don't like needing someone there either. I mean, my whole life thus far has been centered around the fact that I don't need someone to hold my hand, and the minute I let someone in to do just that, I got burned.  
  
Technically, I suppose I wasn't alone this morning. I somehow managed to leave the barn door unlocked last night after I fed the dogs, and all twelve of them were huddled around me or on top of me when I woke up. Why they chose to sleep in the snow when they could have slept in the nice warm barn is beyond me, but I suppose it kept me from freezing to death. I have yet to decide if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Passing out in the front yard last night wasn't entirely unintentional.  
  
I didn't mean to fall there, really, but I could have gotten up. I didn't have to lie face up in the snow and stare at the stars, my half empty whiskey bottle still in hand. I didn't decide to fall, I simply decided not to get back up. Maybe staring up into the cloudless night and wondering why I couldn't be a part of that universe was better than lying in a bed alone and too worried about nightmares to go to sleep. Maybe I couldn't feel the cold wet of the snow seeping in through my coat and jeans. Maybe I just didn't feel like being alive any longer.  
  
I guess it doesn't really matter now. I'm not suicidal or anything like that, I just sometimes don't know why I'm alive. There's a difference. If I wanted to die, all I would have to do is get the pistol from underneath my pillow and put it in my mouth. I don't want to do that. I don't want to die. I just don't want to be alive any longer. I guess it's still suicide when you drink too much and smoke a pack a day because you simply don't care anymore. When you fall asleep in the snow because it's too much effort to get back up. But it's a different kind.  
  
It's looking in the mirror every morning and hating the face you see there. It's skipping meals randomly because it doesn't occur to you that you need to eat. It's voices in your mind constantly reminding you that the only reason you are what you are is you. It's having a husky for a best friend because no one else gives a damn. It's the fact that you can't cry when you're sober, no matter how much you need to. It's drowning in time and air, slowly, gradually, until there's nothing else to cling to. It's asphyxiation as someone lets the air out of your world. It's a fire, burning you on the inside, where no one can see. Slowly, and no one knows it's there but you. A slow burn, eating you until there's nothing left.  
  
I woke up alone this morning, lying in the snow with dogs lounged all around me and over me keeping me warm and a half empty whiskey bottle in one hand. It was the most pathetic thing I've ever done. I've become a sorry, pathetic nothing. I sat up in the snow, wet and shivering and I've probably got pneumonia now, and I started laughing. There was nothing to laugh about, and I really don't know why I was laughing. Maybe it's because I couldn't cry. Maybe I was hysterical, I don't know. Or maybe I was laughing at my own goddamn idiocy.  
  
I don't know what I'm doing out here, I really don't. I feel like I'm searching for something, but I don't know where I am or what I'm looking for or how to find whatever it is. Maybe I haven't had a great life, but I had something. I had something I could cling to, someone that could make me smile. It wasn't nirvana, but it was /something/. And now all of that is gone and I don't know where to look to get it back. Maybe I never will get it back. Maybe I don't deserve to, since I'll probably just fuck it up again anyway. Maybe it wasn't my fault, but goddamn it, it wasn't his either. 


	21. Perfect Opposites

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #21  
  
Phrase: "I don't think I could stand it if s/he told me the truth."  
Word Count: 841  
Rating: R  
  
Title: Perfect Opposites  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Right before the final fist fight in MGS, Liquid reflects as Snake lay unconscious.  
Warning: Yaoi. A bit of insanity. The usual Liquid warnings. XD   
  
--  
  
It's not just a simple awareness anymore when you twist things this far.   
  
It's not even him that I ever cared about before, not until he reappeared from the void of oblivion and stole the one thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. It seems so petty sometimes, even I can see that. To live day in and day out for this one simple purpose, to take each breath with anticipation for only one thing, one insignificant little word that doesn't even have a real meaning: revenge. I had such a hatred burning inside of my for the man who dared call himself my father, and then, when that murder, which was rightfully mine, was stolen from me, I suppose I simply transferred my hatred.   
  
I have kept and eye on him for years now, though never a very close eye. I didn't want to alert him to my presence, after all. No, I let him live on in his delusions for quite sometime, keeping a quiet watch on that little Alaskan cabin near Twin Lakes. He didn't even know I existed until today, while every day of my life, I have longed to meet him. Such perfect opposites, the two of us. How long have I dreamed of this day when I could finally dish out the last bit of my revenge? He didn't know I existed, and I feel like I've known him my entire life.   
  
(I know everything about you.)   
  
It's an obsession, I admit it. It's not a passing interest, a low-key hatred broiling underneath the pure rage I held against my father. That's what it was before, a nagging, secondary hatred...until he stepped in and ruined everything. That's when I transferred my anger to him. You can't just abolish that sort of feeling, you see. It doesn't die, it simply burns quietly in the back of your mind until you can't ignore it any longer. I had to point it somewhere or else I would be the one consumed by the flames.   
  
And all this has grown and twisted and warped until it is what it is today, a living thing consuming me just as much as that hatred would have if I had let it. This is no better, but at least this way, I can take him down with me. I hate him. I hate him so much I can taste the hatred on the air when he is near me. I can feel the texture of my loathing against my skin. It's hate so thick that I can't help but carry it with me. I'm drowning in this and I don't even care.   
  
Someone once told me that the difference between love and hatred is too small to be defined. Now, kneeling here working loose the buckles and lacing holding the top of his sneaking suit in place, he long unconscious from the final explosion of REX, longing to see that chest displayed again as it had in the torture room a few hours ago, I think I finally understand what he meant. Hatred is so strong that it overcomes the entire soul, burning you away into nothing and leaving you without an identity, and love is so overwhelming that you sell your soul to it and become nothing more than a slave to the feeling. What is so very different about it?   
  
(Tell me, brother, what is so very different between us?)   
  
My fingers are trailing down the side of his face, a face so eerily similar to that which I see in the mirror. I hate him more than I hate anything else, and I love him. I've sold my soul to get this close to him. I've given up my identity to try and become him, given it up to sink my claws into /his/ soul. His shirt disappears and his chest is covered in contusions, as is mine. Fingertips are curiously gentle as they explore this new territory. I want to dig my fingernails into his cuts and rip him apart as much as I want to hold him close to me and listen to his heart.   
  
His hair is curling over his bandana, tinted darker with sweat, and it brushes my shoulder as I carry him back up to the top of the ruined metal gear. Love and hate...it's the same, only expressed differently. I don't know how to express both at once. How do you give comfort and pain at once? Perhaps comfort and pain aren't so different as it seems, just as love and hatred are truly the same. Perhaps this is the only difference between us. Perhaps I'm hatred, I'm pain and suffering and insanity. And he's that love. We are not so very different, he and I. We just express ourselves in different ways. That's why he's the only one who can understand...   
  
(Do you hate me, brother? Do you love me as much as I love you?)   
  
I don't think I could stand it if he told me the truth. 


	22. Throw Away

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**  
  
--  
  
Challenge #22  
  
Phrase: "I'm sorry, but this is the only way."  
Word Count: 672  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Title: Throw Away  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Meryl reflects in the underground passage just before she is shot.  
Warning: Yuri! It took me long enough to get some yuri, damn it. Wolf/Meryl. This was also VERY rushed and kind of pathetic.   
  
--  
  
"Meryl." Snake spoke her name, and there was an edge of trepidation in his tone. His green eyes were peering over her shoulder, behind where she stood, down the long, narrow corridor leading up to the Communications Towers.   
  
She turned around slowly and saw immediately what Snake had been referring to. Through the shadows cast from dim lights and clouds of cold kicking off the concrete, there was visible a pinpoint of red light. It was a sharp contrast against the drab blues and grays making up the passageway, one long, easily visible line of a laser, so thick it was almost tangible, and it was focused on her collarbone. She knew exactly what it was, not from the textbooks, not from training.   
  
It was the laser scope of a sniper rifle. A PSG-1, if memory served her correctly. And, although she couldn't see far enough down the dark passage to see who held the gun, she didn't have to see to know. She had aimed this gun herself yesterday, steady hands guiding hers, showing her the best ways to hold it still as she looked through the scope. She hadn't fired the gun. She had known how to shoot guns since she was eight years old, but she hadn't fired the sniper rifle. Its owner asked her not to, for she had been the only one to fire the gun, and so Meryl didn't fire.   
  
Now the gun was aimed at her. The laser point had worked its way up to her face, so she couldn't tell where it was. It reminded her of hands touching her face, caressing her cheek with a tenderness she wouldn't have guessed could come from such a calloused person. Lips on her own, a passion shared between them that she had never experienced coming from a man. She knew no man who could offer passion the way this sniper could. She thought that perhaps men were just unable to give the kind of passion they shared. Even Snake couldn't match what they had, despite growing feelings for him. Despite a determination to forget.   
  
The laser scope moved to her breasts, and she was lost in the memory of those fingers again.   
  
/Why, Wolf?/ and her mouth moved with the thought as though she meant to say it. Wolf couldn't see it. The scope wasn't big enough for her to see her target's mouth. /Does your prey mean that much to you? You'd shoot me too?/   
  
Snake wasn't moving, and she didn't question this. It was just as well, she thought. This was between herself and Wolf this way. She caught the laser point on her hand and she waited. Did she mean anything to Wolf, or had she just been treated kindly because of her gender? Wolf spoke of how much she hated men constantly, and there were no other females on the base. If she'd just been used for her body, then she would already be dead. Wolf hadn't shot her, and there were too many chances for her to get away. Why wasn't she shooting?   
  
Was there something more to this? Had Wolf really meant it when she'd touched Meryl's face with surprisingly warm, delicate fingers and whispered into her ear? The heat of the moment, their passion had warped the memory, Meryl thought, but now Wolf wasn't shooting. The laser scope was tracing lower, back on her chest and working down her stomach and then lower past her hips. Meryl stood still, letting the sniper examine her, once her lover. /You won't do this,/ she thought. /You meant what you said and you won't do this./   
  
She didn't really believe that, but maybe Wolf did.   
  
The laser sight had centered on her right knee now. She knew how seriously Wolf took her work. She followed orders, and through Meryl was the best way to manipulate Snake. It was painfully obvious. She could almost hear that Russian drawl whisper, "I'm sorry, but this is the only way," as the PSG-1 fired through oblivion. 


	23. Bookworm

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

--

Challenge #23

Phrase: "You are so deeply irrelevant."  
Word Count: 890  
Rating: PG-13

Title: Bookworm  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Post MGS2. Jack reads a book while Dave and Hal play video games.  
Warning: Yes, it is as boring as it sounds. I was so uninspired when I wrote this. 

--

It was late enough in the year that Dave had finally declared that the windows could be shut, much to his two roommates' relief. The sun was sinking slowly behind the New York landscape, but, having only an eastern facing window to look out of in the dingy little apartment, and having other things on his mind anyway, Jack wasn't really noticing such. The only evidence that he had noticed anything of the passing of the evening was the fact that he had asked Hal to switch on the ceiling light as the other man had walked by the switch, and then he continued to study his book. 

Hal had given him a book earlier in the day, telling him that he'd like it, and since then, despite not really seeming like the bookworm type, Jack had been nose-first in the thing. Even with Dave sitting in the armchair near the sofa, putting up the television volume until Jack would notice only received a baleful glare for his efforts. This was uncharacteristic for the usually active young man, and equally was it unnerving to his two roommates, who were, after six months of living with the kid, unused to so much silence when the blond wasn't at work or somewhere else that was not the apartment. 

Jack hadn't even put the book down to munch on the pizza Dave had ordered for supper that night, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of pepperoni as his eyes scanned further down the page. The conversation over dinner revolved mostly on Dave asking Hal if the pages in the book were laced with cocaine. Hal responded with a smile and an explanation that the book was just that good, ending with a recommendation that Dave read it as well. Dave pointed out the book's obvious soul sucking capabilities and confided that he liked his soul where it was. Jack, of course, had not responded except to flip the page expertly without even getting pizza grease on the paper. 

After supper, Hal remained perched on the sofa, a black Gamecube controller in his hands and gray-green eyes glued to the screen of the television. Dave had a similar orange controller, though he was much less interested in the television. The screen was flashing a good amount of bright colors and emitting loud, happy noises, and the empty case of 'Mario Kart: Double Dash!!' was strewn haphazardly a few feet away. Dave was making some sort of comment about what he was going to do to 'that brunette bitch' if she didn't stop saying, "Hi, I'm Daisy!" when a voice popped um from a very unlikely source. 

"This doesn't make any sense!" Jack complained irritably, still staring into his book. This, of course, stunned the other two inhabitants of the room into complete silence. Hal at least, possessing the mind of a true gamer, had enough presence of mind to pause the game in mid-race. Jack was frowning, looking rather distraught. "This sentence. Okay, so these two characters are fighting, and a third character comes up and interjects something. Then one of the ones fighting turns and says, 'You are so deeply irrelevant.' That doesn't make sense, does it? People can't be irrelevant, only facts...what?" 

Jack had finally realized, it seemed, that his two roommates were staring at him skeptically. It was, honestly, the first time he'd spoken since he'd picked up the book, apart from guttural noises that were likely supposed to be either positive or negatives to whatever was being asked of him. This, it seemed, was lost on him, because he didn't seem to have a clue as to why he was receiving looks and raised eyebrows from his companions. 

"Actually," Hal said, "that is technically correct. The person who interjected was not a part of the conversation to start with, so, by definition, he was irrelevant to the conversation at hand. It was probably something said in anger, too; take that into account." 

"But how can someone be irrelevant? I mean, his whole existence can't be contrary to the argument, can it?" Jack argued. 

Dave shrugged. "Well, he didn't necessarily mean the guy's entire existence was irrelevant to the subject. It was probably more like what he was offering was completely irrelevant. Or 'deeply.' Or whatever. It's just an expression, kid. Don't take it so literally. The guy was pissed off and that's just the medieval way to say 'fuck off' or something." Dave settled back into his seat with an air of disappointment, seemingly because the only distraction from the soul eating book was an argument over the use of a sentence Jack had never heard before. He grabbed his controller back again, which indicated he was ready to go back to trying to knock, as he termed it, the 'Princess Kart' (complete with Peach and Daisy and lots of pink) back off the edge of Rainbow Road. 

Jack was frowning, torn between Dave's explanation and that little bit that just didn't quite make sense to him. He glanced at Hal, who simply shrugged and gave the younger man a look that read, "He's pretty much right, you know." Jack looked like he wanted to further the argument, but Dave was ignoring him and Hal just smiled and turned the game back on. Finally, he just sighed, opening his book again. 


	24. Changing Times

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

--

Challenge #24

Phrase: "Please don't tell me that's an elephant in the backyard."  
Word Count: 666  
Rating: PG

Title: Changing Times  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Between MG and MG2. Fox reflects on the changes he's been through and the changes yet to come.  
Warning: Yaoi, Fox/Snake. My Snake is an uber-dork. And there are caribou. 

--

It's strange how things can change if you let them. Even if you don't. All it takes for change is to let something in that you wouldn't normally have let in, and there you have it. Change. And sometimes it just kind of happens for you and you're left wondering what the hell happened and how to get back what you had, even when you know damn well you never will. Change can be just as voluntary as it can be inevitable, it's just in how you look at things. 

Sometimes change really bites. Sometimes it can be the worst thing to ever happen to you. Hell, I've seen some changes in my life that were pretty horrific. I guess as a solider, a lot of the change I see is pretty bad. Just goes with the job description, I guess. I've seen towns and villages razed clean to the ground, I've seen family destroyed by bullets and grenades. I've done some of that myself. It's what you do, you know? Not always honorable, but hell, I don't abide by anyone else's standards. Right for me is not necessarily right for the government I work for or for the people I see or whatever. It's right for me, it's what I believe in, and it's what I fight for. 

But change can be good too. I mean, change is what got me out of Vietnam and into the US. Change got me a damn good job doing the only thing I'm any good at, and change got me...well, it got me one of the best things I've ever gotten. 

Not that I'll ever let him know that. Even as I lie here staring up at the ceiling, fingers running through those silky mahogany curls splayed messily across my bare chest, I know I could never let him know. He's a liability as is, without anyone really knowing that I feel as strongly about him as I do. I didn't even admit to myself what I was feeling until just a while ago. And that's privileged information. No one else's business. Maybe he has a right to know, but that's just too bad. 

He's asleep and muttering something about elephants. It's just so damn cute. It'd be cuter, but I think he's drooling on me. 

I'm leaving soon anyway. I don't have a choice. I think Campbell picked up my trail, and there have been people probing at my trail for far too long already. There's no way they can trace anything now, but that won't keep them from finding something, sniffing out something to hold me on.. This is FOXHOUND, after all. You're only as good as the guy standing next to you. And that's pretty rough when you're standing all alone. 

I'm not exactly what you'd call a spy. Let's just say it was advantageous for me to stick around. For me and for Big Boss. I'd just tip him off when they had a lead on his whereabouts. No one could track me. No one even suspected me, since the set up had been botched and I ended up having no idea he was behind Outer Heaven until I got the hell out of there. I think the kid has some idea that my loyalties lie with myself only, but I don't think he realizes that I agree with Big Boss' worldview. He's just too damn naive. That's why I think I can maybe get him to come with me. 

I don't know. He's still so much of a mystery to me. Maybe that's what makes him so attractive. I can't always quite figure out what's going on behind those lucid green eyes. He intrigues me. I don't know if he'll come with me when I tell him or sock me in the eye. 

"Mmm," the kid is dreaming. About elephants, apparently. Who dreams about elephants? Really. "Please don't tell me that's an elephant in the backyard." 

I smile. "Nah, it's just a caribou." 


	25. Introductions

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

--

Challenge #25

Phrase: "Now kiss me goodnight, love."  
Word Count: 777  
Rating: G

Title: Introductions  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Otacon meets Sniper Wolf. This was actually supposed to be #23, but I forgot to post it. So it's kinda old, but oh well.  
Warning: None, really. Slight Otacon/Wolf, I guess? It's a bit rushed, I'm afraid. 

--

Hal Emmerich was not the bravest person in the world. In fact, he was pretty far from it. He rarely stood up for himself or for anything he thought highly off, simply because he didn�t want to get hurt. It didn�t matter what kind of hurt it was, emotional or physical, Hal didn�t want anything to do with it. Some people might have looked at him as a coward, and maybe that was true, but he didn�t really care. He managed to survive living in a Nuclear Weapons Disposal Facility in Alaska on an island called Shadow Moses for three years this way, and he was all right.

That�s why it was more than a little bit odd for him to be doing what he was doing right now. He was scared to death, had no confidence, and was seriously worried that he might wet himself. But he was defending something that was of extreme importance to him. He didn�t have much in the way of a family anymore, since he�d already ruined that, and so maybe this had become some sort of replacement for that family he didn�t have anymore.

Still, he had to say as he started down the muzzle of some sort of machine gun, the make of which he didn�t recognize, he had to wonder if this was worth it. �Please,� he begged, unsuccessfully willing his voice not to squeak in fear. �Don�t shoot them. They�re good dogs, really they are.� Just to prove how very wrong he was, one of the dogs behind him growled rather threateningly at the group of soldiers lined up to shoot the dogs. Wonderful. 

�I�m /not/ going to say it again, Doctor,� the man in charge of the group growled, obviously a step past irritated. �Move out of the way or we�ll remove you. Got it?�

Hal winced, realizing that there was little else he could do to save the poor wolf-dogs. The soldiers were bound and determined to shoot them since the overland route to the underground maintenance base was blocked by glaciers, and the only way to get there on foot was first through the caverns and then through the communications towers. The wild dogs inhabited the underground caverns and apparently had already attacked a few soldiers. Hal had befriended the animals a long time ago, but he knew he couldn�t do anymore for them and reluctantly stepped down from his protective stance.

The door slid open then, and someone came out, but Hal�s back was to the door and he didn�t dare look away from the soldiers to see who it was. Probably just another soldier to help them shoot the wolves. He was surprised at the voice which spoke from behind him, first at the fact that it was feminine and secondly at the heavy Russian accent carried. �What is going on here?�

Hal turned around, and saw one of the most amazing women he�d ever seen. Her hair was so blonde, it was almost white, and it spilled down over her shoulders onto her white down jacket. Her eyes were a piercing blue, rimmed with a tint of hazel, framed by long eyelashes. Her skin was pale and impeccably smooth. And she was looking right at him.

�They�re going to shoot the dogs,� Hal stuttered, gesturing to the men behind him. He was certain the blush on his cheeks was suddenly no longer from the cold.

The woman looked past him then, and one of the dogs barked threateningly at a soldier. He turned cocking his gun at the wolf. Before Hal could even blink, the woman had moved, her fist connecting with the soldier�s jaw, knocking his gun off and the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off of the stone wall. The dog yelped at the noise and leapt backwards a few feet, but the woman was then kneeling by the dog, calming him. Hal started--the dogs were wild, and she was petting it like it was domesticated.

�Ma�am, these dogs are wild and dangerous,� one of the soldiers said.

�They�re /not/ going to shoot the dogs,� she amended, casting a glare at the guards, who were rather shocked into silence. �There is no reason for it. Look, they�re perfectly friendly.� The wolf-dog she was petting whined and wagged its tail. �Now kiss my goodnight, love,� she said to it, and it licked her cheek in response.

She yelled a bit more and finally pulled rank to get the guards to leave. Hal, being bad with people, turned to go too, but she stopped him.

�Will you help me feed the dogs?� she asked.

He turned and smiled shyly. �I�d love to.� 


	26. A True Patriot

**Rather important little note: This fic is not a fic at all. It is a conglomeration of small drabbles, pieces of stories that do not belong in any fic. These were all challenges, where a phrase and the word count were given to me, and I wrote something in response to the challenge. I like some of them, so I'm posting them here, in this story thing. New drabbles go into new chapters. None of them go together. They're just here.**

--

Challenge #26

Phrase: "Get up and dance!"  
Word Count: 999  
Rating: PG

Title: A True Patriot  
Author: Rydia Highwind  
Disclaimer: Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 and all characters refered to herein belong to Konami. I claim nothing, I'm simply borrowing.  
Summary: Jack reflects as he visits the grave of a dear friend at the end of MGS3.  
Warning: SPOILERS. MGS3 SPOILERS. Normal people haven't finished the game yet since it hasn't been out an entire week in the US yet, but I HAVE because I'm lame. Just so you know. ::watches as NO ONE READS THIS:: >> 

--

You are dead. 

I suppose it�s a little strange that I�m talking to you, addressing you as though you�re standing in front of me or sitting beside me rather than buried six feet under the ground I�m kneeling on. But I don�t know how else to tell you what I feel. I don�t know what else to do. 

They tell me I�m the new boss. They tell me that I even surpassed you. Lyndon B. Johnson himself gave to me the title of Big Boss. I don�t know how many of them know what you really did for them, but if they knew, I don�t think they would be so glib to say such a thing. I understand now, Eva told me everything, just as you intended for her to do. And I can�t imagine how you did everything you did. I can barely stand to look these people in the eye after what they did to you. After what they did to us. 

Now all I can do is kneel here before your grave, in a field packed with line after line of stones, all identical, and lay a bouquet of lilies here in the grass. I can read the inscription over and over, the inscription there chosen by me only because they wouldn�t mark the grave of a traitor. Ironic, isn�t it? History will remember you as a traitor to your country in the worst possible way. And yet the inscription I chose marks you as a patriot. A true patriot. Because that�s what you were. You would do anything for your country, even betray it. 

Your orders. Your mission. I didn�t understand what you meant when you talked to me about these things, but I see now what you meant. I see know what you wanted. And they gave me your title, and they want me to follow in your footsteps, to question nothing given to me, to obey simply because I�m a soldier. But I�m through with that. They screwed you over badly, worse than they did to anyone. But they screwed me over too. And that�s not going to happen again. 

It makes me angry sometimes, but I keep on thinking that you wouldn�t want me to be angry with them. You knew exactly what your fate was when you set off for the USSR. You knew damn well that I�d have to come and eventually kill you. You knew everything beforehand and you went through with it anyway. I don�t think you�d want me to be angry, and that�s why I�m trying to go back. To remember way back when you were training me, and the good times that we shared. The times that made me love you, as a mother, as a teacher, and as a friend. 

Do you remember the time when you were trying to get me to relax after a long hard work out? You had the radio on and you had just gotten out of the shower, still dressed in nothing but a bathrobe. You always tried to explain to me how the world was nothing without joy and that I needed to take a break sometimes. You caught me reading a book on combat from the first world war, after we were finished training for the day. You plucked it out of my fingers and turned the radio louder. Then you took my hands and pulled me out of my chair and said, �Get up and dance!� 

We danced around the kitchen for the better part of the night, to whatever song came on the radio. There was even a news bulletin and we danced through that anyway. I didn�t want to be dancing, so my movements were slow and stiff for the first song, hoping you�d give up on me. But you never did. You never gave up on anything, I don�t think, myself least of all. But soon the night wore on and you didn�t let go of my shoulder and we kept dancing until I was finally laughing with you. 

Finally we settled on to the sofa, exhausted from our work out and the dancing. And you looked at me and you said, �Jack, do you know why I fight? Do you know why I decided to be a soldier?� 

I don�t remember what I replied, but it was probably something stupid, knowing me. 

�I fight because that�s what I love more than anything else in the world,� you told me, your eyes sparkling. �If I didn�t fight, I wouldn�t breathe either. There�s no reason for me to be alive if I�m not doing this. Jack, everyone has something they live for, something they love. You�re taking your training too seriously. It�s important that you find something that brings you joy, and you live for that. Let your hair down, enjoy this. You�re a gifted soldier, just make sure you�re fighting for something worth fighting for, or you�ll never be happy doing this.� 

I didn�t know what you meant then. Maybe I still don�t know what you meant. But I think I get it. You named your sons after what emotion they carried with them into battle, but you never named me. Even when I bested you in that field of flowers, you never named me as one of your sons. You never gave me an emotion. Maybe that�s because I never found something that I was fighting for. Sure, I like fighting and all, but I never found something to believe in. Something to protect. 

Maybe I still don�t have something I�m protecting. But now I have a goal. I�m not going to continue what you started, and I�m not going to try to be what you were. Instead, I�m going to keep fighting and building and passing on what you gave me. I�m still your son, after all, and I�ll make sure your dreams will never be obsolete. Maybe I can�t be a true patriot, but I can still live for one. 


End file.
